The Last Wave (Peter Weir, 1977, Australia)

David though his practice as an attorney stumbles across a world of mysteries and prophecies leading to catastrophic events.

Last Wave is a detective story of apovalyptic proportions. Like all of Peter Weir´s films this ine defies the simple definitions of reality. Weir got the idea when he asked hemself; “What if someone with a very pragmatic approach ti life experienced a premonition?”. The film grapples with the dilemma of the native black race ruled by immigrant whites who at their own risk ignore the aboriginals spiritual identity. It is visulally stunning all the way an the acting superb from Chamberlain´s febriel intencity of confusion to the intractable and calm tribal leader Charlie. Though the film touches many political and spiritual themes it refuses to solve these issues.

Peter Weir is one of the directors tha gave birth to the so called “australian new cinema, others to be film-makers such as Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford . Peter´s narrative signature is the mans struggle agaisnt his own made destiny and civilization as can be seen Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness, The Mosquito Coast and The Truman Show.

Memories of Underdevelopment (Memorias del subdesarrollo, Tomás Gutierrez Alea, 1968, Cuba)

Sergio, an intellectual playboy and a aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba when his wife his friends all flee to Miami. The year is 1961 shortly after the Bay of Pigs incident and follows Sergios lifestyle, his relationship with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna, and the everyday living in a undeveloped country.

The film is a character study and the effect of lifelyhood during the turmoil of social changes. It is told in a subjective point of view throught the fragmented memories of Sergio. Based on a book by Edmundo Desnoes, it mixes documentary, fantasy and fiction to place the viewer in the mind of a man caught between capitalist and revolutionary worlds. Shot in black and white with hand-held cameras it stages scenes and cuts to bring it to a realism and keeps the end open just as life is. It is a critique of the revolutionary society and also a critique of itself using a artistic subtlety.

It quickly became a international favorate after sweeping awards and prace at Havana Film Festival and is Gutierrez Alea´s best known film, others being Muerte de un burócrata, La,Última cena, La and more recently Fresa y chocolate and Guantanamera. Edmundos is working on the sequel and another movie to be released this year based on the book, called Memories of Development.

La Belle et la Bete (Jean Cocteau, 1946, France)

Most people know the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast famously made by Disney. Here Cocteau involves a deeper sense of emotions between beauty and beast and though their relationship can never be fulfilled their love is true. Even a handsome prince changes nothing as the beast goes through his transformation in the end and mabey even to the worse. Greta Garbo famously shouted after the premiere, “Give me back my beast!”.

Cocteau was well learned in art history and avant garde art and many references to paintings by painters such as Fusili and Vermeer can be seen in the set design of Christina Bérard. Cocteau uncouraged his photographer Alekan to use less techincal cinematography to let the mise-en-scéne savor a bit. The film begins with “Once upon a time…” and then told with a melancholy smile and a child-like vision. The poet Paul Éluard said that to understand this film, man would have to love his dog more than his car.

Jean Cocteau always thought of himself as a poet but also wrote novels and plays, drew and painted, directed movies and ballets and also designed some sets for plays and movies. As a director he made a trilogy where he studies the life of the artist, Testament d'Orphée, Le, Orphée, Sang d'un poète, Le. The films reflect Cocteau as a poet and shows his skill in avant garde art such as surrealism. He casted his lover and friend Jean Marais (The Beast) in many of his films and never hid his homosexuality and it never brought down his brilliance. Though he worked briefly as a film-maker he directed six films and few more scripts, one more famous than the other Jean-Pierre Melville´s Les Enfants terribles. Cocteau though La Belle et la Bete wasn´t getting the right reviews so he wrote a preventive answer which was published in the press book for the U.S. premiere. (the essay can be read here). Though, nearly a decade later he is quoted in Newsweek (16. may 1955), „Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture.“.

The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988, USA)

Randall Adams is a drifter and is stranded one day, his car run out of gas, and is then luckily picked up by a 16 year old boy. They spent the day together drinking beer, smoking marijuana and going to a drive-in-movie. This is where their stories go separate ways and Adams gets slammed into jail for a murder Harris claimed he committed.

The movie uses interviews, witness testimony and staged events. It not only puts its criticism into words but also uses teqnique to convey the text. This movie did a big part to have Adams retrialed and released from prison, and from then Adams has been an anti-death penalty activist. David Ray Harris was later executed on separate charges for another murder.

Morris did get any attention from inside the film culture though it was a changepoint in Adams life, but he later won the Oscar for The Fog of War in the year 2004 and also nominated in Directors Guild of America for the same film.

An Actor’s Revenge ( Yukinojo Henge, Kon Ichikawa, 1963, Japan)

It doesn’t happen often that a film actually benefits from it’s director not wanting to make it, but this is one of those rare cases. He was not in favor at his studio (daiei) after his last two films had lost money. He was assigned to make this film and could not refuse. The film was made to celebrate actor Kazuo Hasegawa’s 300th film and was a remake of his most popular film where he’d played two roles: As a Kabuki actor always clad as a woman and as a thief who assist the actor to avenge his parents. This is a swashbuckling action-adventure. When Hasegawa originally acted these roles he was 27. Now he was 55.

Instead of toning down this absurdity and improbability of the story Ichikawa exaggerates them and has fun with the theatricality and artificiality of the piece and basically made a live-action cartoon, reflecting his background as a Manga artist. He uses devices like thought bubbles, blatantly fake sets, non-fitting music and so forth. He also makes the sexual ambiguity of the film obvious, especially in a scene where Hasegawa as a man watches himself as a woman having sex with a woman.

Kon Ichikawa is still alive and working. He’s undoubtably a talented film-maker and has made a number of remarkable films. We’ll mention his very humanistic war films like The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain and the outstanding documentary Tokyo Olympiad, which revolutionized the filming of sports. He has however made some films which can’t honestly be recommended.

Harakiri (Seppuku, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962, Japan)

A ronin samurai arrives at a nobleman’s compound expalins his situation, poverty and desperation and requests permission to take his life in the samurai way on the noble’s land. After trying to persuade him not to and telling him the tragic story of another samurai who made the same request and due to suspicions that he’s only trying to get pity and money, they finally accept his request. Whilst the ceremony is is being prepared the ronin starts to tell his story and nobleman and his cohorts begin to suspect that not all is as seen.

The narrative is slow and relies heavily on repeating motifs, but by that builds tension and suspense and is never boring or long-winded. The theme of Harakiri is hypocricy. It is a searing attack on the class system and lack of social compassion, using the past to examine the present. Kobayashi has only recently been rediscovered in the west after making truly excellent and award-winning films, such as Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan. To add on the highly underrated and outstanding Tatsyua Nakadai plays the main role.

Harakiri (and most of Kobayashi’s work) is a thoroughly minimalistic work, it uses repetition and few, limited sets and movements and the music is used sparingly etc. but all it’s aspects are used purposefully and thus have a clearer and stronger meaning than in most other films. The editing creates clear, sharp contrasts between periods of time and the camera movements are amazing and the speciality of Kobayashi.

Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971, UK)

"Bloody" Sam Peckinpah never was and never will be known for delicacy. This may be his most controversial film and divisive film and that's saying something. He wanted to make a film about violence, it's causes, actions and consequences...Vilence as it is: the sense of loss, pain, and destuction of normal means of communication, communities and relationships. Most of all, he wanted to show the violence men show to women; in the physical, sexual and social sense.

The result was Straw Dogs and whether or not Sam Peckinpah was successful is something each person should answer for his or herself.

The Story follows a timid mathematician, played by Dustin Hoffman, who has moved with his English wife to her birthplace by a small village. The townspeople treat them with suspicion, contempt or as something to laugh at. The tension very slowly builds up until it reaches boiling points, twice in the film in it's most famous, controversial, shocking and ambigous sequences. We believe that seeing is believing and therefore we won't disclose what happens, except that these scenes are important, but very difficult to watch.

Sam Peckinpah said after making the film and seeing the initial backlash that he had failed in his task. His message had been lost and people didn't see that he was using hyper-realistic violence not to shock, but to expose the true horror of it. The film has been called misogynistic and it could easily be read as such, but it could just as easily be read as an uncomfortable way of reminding the viewer that women were and still are the victim of more brutal violence than men. But whether or not his attempt at provoking thought was or was not successful, there is no denying that this a masterpiece of film-making. From the terrific camera-work, acting, script, story-telling, score and editing. This is one of many examples that Peckinpah, though controversial, was one of the great filmmakers of the 20th century.

Visitor Q (Bijita Q, Takashi Miike, 2000, Japan)

An ultra-dysfunctional middle-class family lies in ruins. The father and son are bullied by co-workers and schoolmates. The mother has developed a drug dependency due to pain and loss of intimacy with the rest of the family. The daughter has all but left home and become a prostitute. And then a complete stranger only referred to as Q enters their life and home by violent means and starts disrupting their lives. His aim seems to be to the resurruction of the family rather than it's disruption. This film is extreme, rough and frankly rather sick. But it has a message and point to make that is very relevant.

The movie was made for less than 1M $ and shot with a digital camera, which adds to the home documentary home movie feel and this highly provocative film may go down as controversial director Miike´s masterpiece. This film is not a parody where the family unit is being mocked, but rather an extreme expression of how the classic family unit is going exctinct (in modern Japan).

Takashi Miike is a work-horse. He averages around five films a year and more than a few of them are noted for violence and extremism. To name a few he's made Audition, Ichi the Killer, Happiness of the Katakuris and the yakuza epic Dead or Alive. His latest film is now in post-production and will be released this spring, shot in english and Quentin Tarantino has a role in the film. The film, Sukiyaki Western Django, takes place in medieval Japan and is said reminiscent of Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Django (Kinofill showed Django last november).

The Firemen´s Ball (Horí ma Panenko, Milos Forman, 1967, Czechoslovakia)

In a small czech village the annual firemen´s ball is being planned to fullest detail, a lottery is organized and winnings collected, girls are auditioned for a beauty contest and the winner is to present the 86-year-old retiring president with a golden hatchet. Life and unpredictable circumstances see to that nothing happens as it should. The lottery prizes vanish mysteriously one by one, the committee, finding girls to shy and mothers to ferocous, start abducting any girl pretty or not and the ancient president desparate for a quick trip to the little boys room is kept waiting and waiting.

The film is written by Milos Forman, Jaroslav Papousek and Ivan Passer and is inspired by a real-life firemmen´s ball. According to Forman: “What we saw was such a nightmare that we didn´t stop talking until next day about it. So we abandoned what we were writing on to start writing this script”. The film demonstrates critical awaerness of Soviet society and is is not hard to view it as a sly political allegory though Forman has always maintained that the film has no “hidden symbols or double meanings”. The movie was shot with non-professional actors in the village of Vrchlabí and was shelved for a year when it was finished in 1967 and then ran for three weeks in 1968 before it was banned, never to be shown again in communist Czechoslovakia.

Forman soon relocated to USA where he continued film-making and still is. His most favored works are One Flew Over the Cockoo´s Nest, Amadeus and Man on the Moon.

Zero for Conduct (Zeró de Conduite, Jean Vigo, 1933, France)

The movie takes place in a French boarding school and follows the life of the young pupiles there. Their life is a sad, dull and they regarded like prisoners of the the teachers, but there is a plot being set for a revolt.

The films secondary title, “Young Devils at College” is perhaps more clarifying and in tune with how the young devils are looked upon. The film is pro-child exept for one sympathetic teacher who enters the spirit of things by joking around in class and producing a cartoon which comes to life. Other adults are displayed as bourgeois grotesques, such examples as the midget headmaster and grossly fat science teacher. The film experiments with slow-motion, animation and trick photography absorbed from the avant-gardism og Buñuel and René Clair. Vigo is also thought to have invented in this film the “aquarium shot”, heigtening the claustrophobic enviroment in which strange apparitions are produced from every available corner or pocket.

The film was banned until 1945 by French censors, eleven years after the death of its director. Vigo was only 29 when he died in 1934 of tuberculosis leaving only four works of film-making. In 1929 he got money loaned to buy a camaer and made his first film, Á Propos de Nice (1930), with the aid of Boris Kaufman (Dziga Vertovs younger brother). His next project was Taris, roi de l´eau (1931) and then Zeró de Conduite. His final work was the film L´Atalante, (which kinofíll showed last year) released the 12^th of september 1934, less than a month before his death.